Make Your Own DIY Solar Charger

Keep your gadgets powered even when you’re off the grid.

By The Big Book Of Hacks Posted 01.18.2013 at 2:00 pm 5 Comments

DIY Solar Charger The Big Book Of Hacks

MATERIALS
Plywood
Jigsaw
Drill
Nails
Hammer
Two 1-inch (2.5 cm) wood slats
5-watt, 12-volt solar panel
Hinge
Soldering iron and solder ¼-inch (6.35-mm) plastic mono plug
Cigarette-lighter Y adapter
12-volt 12AH rechargeable battery
Solar DC charger controller
4 feet (1.2 m) of 18-gauge wire
15-amp DC panel meter
Two female terminal disconnects

STEP 1
Check online to discover your home’s latitude. This is the angle at which you’ll mount your solar panel.

STEP 2
Cut six pieces of plywood for the box. The lid should be slightly larger than the solar panel. Trim the top edges of the side, front, and back pieces to the appropriate angle. Cut the bottom to fit.

STEP 3
Drill a hole in each side panel for airflow: one in the back panel for the controller and battery cords, and one in the lid for the solar panel’s cord. Then nail the wooden slats to the lid and mount the solar panel to it. Assemble the box with a hinge for the lid.

STEP 4
Snip off the cigarette-lighter plug and solder the ¼-inch (6.35-mm) mono plug onto the Y adapter. Insert the mono plug into the controller’s 12-volt output.

STEP 5
Connect all four power leads from the battery and the solar panel to the controller’s input terminals. Hook up the 15-amp DC panel meter to the controller’s input terminal for the panel.

STEP 6
Test all connections with the meter. Connect the red wire with a female-terminal disconnect to the battery’s positive terminal, and connect the black wire to the negative terminal.

STEP 7
Place the station in the sun with the solar panel pointed south (north if you’re in the southern hemisphere). Plug something in!

This project was excerpted from The Big Book Of Hacks: 264 Amazing DIY Tech Projects, a compendium of ingenious and hilarious projects for aspiring makers. Buy it here. And for more amazing hacks, go here.

Previous Article: Build Your Own DIY Virtual Reality Glasses

Next Article: Build And Launch A Mini-Rocket

Want to read more articles like this, plus tips and tricks, home hacks, DIY projects, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

5 Comments

Link to this comment

johnny3000

01/18/13 at 10:55 pm

First!

Link to this comment

Robot

01/19/13 at 9:27 am

It would of been nice to state the Manufacture and a link of the solar panel in the article, they used and the other hard to find items in this article, too.

Link to this comment

ford2go

01/20/13 at 2:08 am

Congratulations! The instructions for this one are almost useable. Most of the previous ones were lame ( intentional?).

Coupled with the fact that your 2nd link doesn't work might lead one to believe that this whole series is a promo for the book. But, you guys would never do that :)

Link to this comment

aequast

01/20/13 at 10:31 am

Thanks for nothing on this one. No info other than self-serving outline of basic "how-not-to" be helpful to those of use who subscribe to be able to learn something useful from PS. For a senior person this smells like a bait and switch for a blatant sales tactic. Thanks a lot.... NOT!!!!

Link to this comment

triplej

01/21/13 at 3:43 pm

So they are really saying to go buy a solar panel and a charge controller.... How is this building your own solar charger? This should have been "How to build a bird house that has electrcity"